I will update this review over time as EA goes, as of writing this is release build with 3 hotfixes with first update coming in 3 days. As seen in the hour count I have put alot of hours in already and I played the original Forest as my fave game since 2014 so I could just leave a recommended out of bias, and while I do recommend it even objectively, I will go over what to consider. Might also add a video to this review with thoughts in detail once I get into making it.

My first playthrough went on for 16.7 hours - not exploring everything building has to offer and missing some interactions - and for that it is already worth it considering the half AAA game price tag. Looking into it longterm there is alot of content missing for the "long run", EA definetely needs to add alot in. It is also clearly an EA title, bugs and some frame drops here and there are noticable, but compared to some other titles it is quite a stable EA release, at least as stable as it gets. People compare it right now to a "Forest 1.5" and yeah, as mentioned, it lacks this longterm content quite a bit, but even if you are not as hardcore invested as someone like me, with the building system and with a bunch of friends its very fun and addicting.

Some other things to consider, good and bad:
- Speaking of building, it is top notch. Not that much reason to build a base yet, but if you want you can go nuts with it, it is a bit limiting "tool-wise" but you can completely build a structure how you want it to be and its absolutely satisfying.
- Graphic and animations are stellar. With how well the game runs on average (not always but on average) it is insane, you will need some decent hardware though, quite demanding unlike what the steam requirements might tell you.
- Overall gameplay loop for just messing around and exploring is fun but limiting, you can find quite a fair amount of cool stuff randomly but the map itself has a bunch of spots that are empty right now and placeholders for future updates.
- The progression storywise right now is insanely linear, if they added more cave systems that interconnect which they most certainly will that would solve alot but as it stands right now it goes against the open world feeling that the first game had, GPS doesnt help that all important locations are marked on it from the get-go so you will wander around alot looking at that stupid thing rather than look at the world itself (Im pretty sure that that could just be a "we show you everything so you can test it EA and later we will remove it when out of testing" mechanic)
- Balancing is all over the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ place right now. It is unironically very comparable to an XCOM campaign. At the beginning you will be weak and suffer, with game knowledge on consecutive playthroughs maybe not, but at first you will suffer especially with the improved melee system - enemies parry and counterattack now, which is very welcome compared to the rather dull melee system of the first game so a welcome change imo btw - but once you reach a certain point of progression shovel and you get certain weapons, the enemies just cannot keep up. If you thought Modern Bow + Arrows in the first game was bad, oh boy, the balance needs some adjusting imo. Fun to just unleash rage, but for it being "survival horror" it just becomes not only too easy but trivial.

These are my overall thoughts so far, as I said will update as time comes. I highly recommend it in this state already, probably only dealbreaker could be the hardware so watch out for that. Thank you for reading and if you decide to pick it up, happy survibing!